Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I have a blog post up at Cato@Liberty today about Senate Democrats’ national ID plans. The thing is nine printed pages long. It doesn’t get my recommendation that you read the whole thing—unless you really jones for identity-systems talk. Here’s a summary: The plan is confusing, disorganized, repetitive, and sometimes contradictory. Summarizing it is a [...]
REAL ID continues its long, slow failure. The federal government’s national ID plans continue to bash against the shoals of state and popular opposition. Late last month, the governor of Utah signed H.B. 234 into law. The bill prohibits the Utah driver license division from implementing REAL ID. That brings to 25 the number of [...]
—all one paragraph of it—on the Cato@Liberty blog. The upshot: Their promise not to have a national ID database is almost certainly wrong. Sold as a simple quick-fix, it would take decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build, encountering untold complexities beyond what we already know.
So reports the Wall Street Journal: Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. It’s the natural evolution of the policy called “internal enforcement” of immigration law, as [...]
Over on the Cato@Liberty blog, I’ve highlighted some recent talk of a creating a national ID system for voting. Worrisome thinking from people who should be more circumspect. “A Breezy Slide From Vote Integrity to National ID” is the post.
This week, I have been up at Harvard University participating in another meeting of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF), of which I am a member. The ISTTF was organized earlier this year pursuant to an agreement between 49 state attorneys general (AGs) and social networking giant MySpace.com. A group of experts from academia, [...]
The USA Today editorial board published a nasty piece today belittling MySpace.com’s recent efforts to implement more safeguards for its users. Despite the fact that MySpace made over 70 promises to the Attorneys General as part of the agreement–the entire agreement is summarized here–that’s still not good enough for the USA Today’s editorial board, which [...]
This morning in New York City, social networking website operator MySpace.com announced a major joint effort with 49 state Attorneys General aimed at better protecting children online. (Coverage at CNet, NYT and Forbes). At a joint press conference, MySpace and the AGs unveiled a “Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety” involving expanded [...]
As Braden mentioned, we were both down in Raleigh, North Carolina this week testifying at a big hearing on mandatory age verification for social networking sites. It was quite a heated battle. The legislation, SB 132, was supported at the hearing by North Carolina attorney general Roy Cooper, several of his staff attorneys, a couple [...]
February 14, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
